It was shortly after Boris Johnson won his landside majority that his aides first began plotting to oust him. That isn’t some mad conspiracy theory, but recorded fact. Dominic Cummings told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg in 2021 that he started discussing options for replacing his boss within “days not months” of the election. Now the Covid inquiry has unearthed his contemptuous WhatsApps, Nadine Dorries’s contention that Cummings seemed to consider himself in charge, and surreptitiously texted colleagues “what the fuck is this clown on about?” as Johnson spoke in meetings, seems reasonably plausible.
She’s right, too, that Rishi Sunak’s well-planned leadership campaign didn’t magically come together overnight, that Westminster has its share of sociopaths who seemingly enjoy manipulating others, and that some players become so addicted to the game they forget it’s real life to everyone else. Her horrific account of the way women raped by MPs were allegedly treated by Conservative whips tallies, meanwhile, with bleak stories of assaults hushed up or weaponised for political gain that are already in the public domain, though one hopes these victims were warned before their anonymised stories were published. The big picture, then, feels roughly right. Some small details, such as the “algorithm-distorted” new MPs constantly panicking about Twitter or the way colleagues seem scratchier post-Brexit, are also shrewdly observed. So why, then, does this eye-poppingly extraordinary book somehow fail to ring true?
